Reaching a Broad Community with Online

Collecting

Sheila A. Brennansbrennan@gmu.edu

People are Sharing

http://www.pewinternet.org/

Why not use SM platform to collect?

http://www.connectsc.org/

Good Reasons to Collect Online

1. Collections can be large and more diverse in perspective and voices (in aggregate & individually).

2. Opportunity to collect greater variety of evidence beyond a narrated story through web interface: text, images + audio, video, other files.

3. Individuals decide what they want to share online.

4. Collected materials are discoverable & available to the public very quickly (immediately or soon after w/vetting).

5. Building community by building a new archive together, based on by shared experiences.

Get Started

http://chnm.gmu.edu/digitalhistory

Digital Memory Banking since the late-1990s

Outgrowth of oral projects

http://blackout.gmu.edu

http://echo.gmu.edu

http://911digitalarchive.org

http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ww2peopleswar

http://hurricanearchive.org

http://hurricanearchive.org/contribution

http://braceroarchive.org

http://omeka.org

http://historypin.org

Online collecting by Museums

http://americanhistory.si.edu/agheritage

Assessing a PlatformTo ensure sustainability, consider:• Metadata: Standardized schema (Ex: Dublin Core)• Scalability: large collections and broadly for multiple

file formats (text, images, video, audio)• Data portability: export in multiple data output

formats• Interoperability: communicates with archival, library

systems, w/ability to share content in other spaces• Usability: Intuitive user interface, simple & easy to

use• Accessibility: sight-impaired, & Mobile accessible• Open access: freely available for research, while also

giving contributors rights over their own contributions

Challenges• Online submissions can contain less descriptive

metadata.

• Submissions vary in quality—and you can’t tamper with the original—because the variety of contributors building your new collection. You have to be comfortable with that variety.

• Use: will be wide and unpredictable.

• Project don’t run on their own:• Requires a dedicated institution w/a person who

maintains the site, vets contributions. • Requires dedicated outreach.

Online Collecting as Web 1.5

“for all the potentialities of online collecting and democratizing the past, remember that any project still requires a great deal of analog hands-on history work.”

Why Collecting Online is Web 1.5: http://chnm.gmu.edu/essays-on-history-new-media/essays/?essayid=47

• Even with these challenges, it is still a good approach.

Many Civil Rights Projects, not collecting from public

• Lots!

What is Next?• Any new collecting projects must be designed

mobile-first

Design Mobile First: Responsive Design

Distributed Collecting Approach

http://braceroarchive.org

Community Resources

Involving Students

http://historyharvest.unl.edu

Lift Every Voice Can Share Every Voice